Throttle Body

My short story titled "Throttle Body" has recently been published as a standalone chapbook from Nightjar Press, and as has become usual I'm writing a few words discussing how the story came to be written. There may be spoilers within.

Like most of my fiction, the idea sprang from the title. Having some issues with the car one summer my partner was looking through the manual and mentioned something called a throttle body. This is a tube-shaped housing that contains a flat valve (butterfly) that rotates to vary the amount of air entering an engine. Clearly the name is incredibly evocative and the idea of throttling as a means to reduce an intake of air obviously has connotations beyond the mechanical. I filed the title away.

Sometime later I was watching a film where a couple were having a conversation whilst driving. I'm always fascinated by how long someone can take their eyes off the road to talk directly at their passenger in films, but not only this, the use of hand movements to suggest they are actually driving (as opposed to sitting in a studio) is always exaggerated. If those movements were to be mimicked, a vehicle would be veering left and right on an otherwise straight road. The artifice of driving within film seemed to connect to the Throttle Body title. And then - of course - I remembered those occasions where a deer is hit by teenagers that foreshadows the plot of many a horror film. The fact that my own teenage daughter was learning to drive also added fuel to this nightmare scenario, and the basic structure of the plot - where a film-lecturing father hits something whilst dropping his daughter back home - came almost fully-formed from the above. Adding a sprinkling of my usual what-is-real-what-isn't-real element to the story, and Throttle Body was born.

Here's a bit of it: 

Ward sighed. “You recognise it for what it is, yeah. It’s a foreshadowing device. The scenario for hitting the animal unfolds in a way that will allude to or demonstrate primal aspects of how the driver is going to have to deal with the later horrific conflict.”

“Textbook horror, textbook Dad.”

“You know what I’m saying.”

“Just shut up and watch the movie. If I wanted a lecture I’d have enrolled in your uni class.”

Ward sighed. These moments between them were glazed with expectations and remonstrations. Whilst their relationship had improved since Indy had found her own space, it was almost a conscious effort not to replay old roles. However fraught they had been, an undeniable familiarity made them almost comfortable. Ward was tired of arguing – especially tired of arguing needlessly – and it wouldn’t take much to kickstart trouble again. He folded himself back into the film. It wasn’t a piece of art, it was a roadmap to getting them back together.

Throttle Body is published as a limited edition signed chapbook through Nightjar Press. It retails at £3 in paperback plus postage. It can be bought here.

As regular readers are aware, I write my short stories listening to music on repeat. In this case, throughout the entire writing session, I listened to the Raveonettes' album Observator on repeat. I always find their music evocative when writing, and this was no exception.